Pebble’s Steel Aims to Bring the Fashion Conscious Into the Smartwatch Fold

One of the biggest criticisms of smartwatches? They’re ugly. These big-screened plastic wearables are nowhere near as handsome as the Movado, Nixon or Tag Heuer timepiece you might already have on your wrist.

It is something that has been driving Pebble, the maker of one of the most popular smartwatches, pretty crazy. “We wanted to figure out how we could get Pebble on more wrists, and the answer was through an industrial design change,” Eric Migicovsky, the CEO and founder of Pebble, said in an interview.

With that, the company is introducing the Pebble Steel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Monday. As the name gives away, the Steel is a metal version of the company’s popular watch, which brings phone notifications, customizable watch faces and fitness-tracking capabilities to your wrist.

The Steel is available with a few different stylish bands.

Pebble

The Steel has the same 1.26-inch backlit outdoor-readable e-paper display and physical buttons to navigate it, but it is now 10 percent thinner and comes in a brushed stainless steel and a black matte stainless steel. Each $250 watch will come with a metal and leather strap. (Migicovsky said they couldn’t decide which they liked better, so why should buyers?) The size of the metal strap can be adjusted by removing the links.

The watch is certainly more stylish and svelte than the original Pebble, which will still remain on shelves for $150. It’s also smaller than Samsung’s Galaxy Gear. Yet from my first impression, it still doesn’t feel like a particularly high-quality watch, in part because it lacks the heft of a luxury good.

Still, the Steel could prove its worth with more functionality in a sleeker frame. Pebble is launching an app store for its watches, which will include a sports-score app from ESPN, and an app from Pandora that lets you control your phone’s music. The store will appear on Pebble’s iOS and Android smartphone apps later this month.

Of course, the Pebble Steel is just one of many high-tech bracelets and watches debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. Companies including Archos and Qualcomm will be exhibiting their watches as rumors continue to swirl that Apple and Google are working on their own wrist wearables.

Migicovsky doesn’t seem worried, though. “There are always more and more people getting into the game,” he said, as he strapped his Steel back on his wrist. “It’s pretty exciting.”